NVIDIA announce new ESA open standard

The computer industry (particularly in the enthusiast sector) has just experienced a solid jolt today with NVIDIA formally announcing a new open standard that they hope makers of high-end systems and products will start following as it matures.

Dubbed the "Enthusiast System Architecture" (or ESA for short), this new standard is designed to allow for the real-time monitoring and control of PC power supplies, chassis, and water-cooling systems. The Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA) specifies an information protocol that system components can use to "communicate" with each other to adjust operating parameters, and relay important system information back to the user.

By implementing ESA, PC manufacturers and do-it-yourself enthusiasts can now build finely-tuned and higher performance PCs than they could have with existing proprietary solutions.

Apparently there are at least 15 leading PC OEMs, motherboard and peripheral manufacturers to have already endorsed this new open ESA specification so It's looking pretty strong in its early stages and should bring us some very highly tweaked products before too long.

NVIDIA's official announcement can be located here, and there's quite a bit of coverage across the web about the new standard via the below links as well :-

The new ESA standard is built around the current USB HID class specification and is designed to support new monitoring and control capabilities for PC devices such as chassis, power supplies, and water and air cooling peripherals. Until the introduction of ESA, there was no standard communication protocol allowing such components to report information back to users. Essential data, such as temperature, thermal, voltage, and air flow attributes are made available in real-time and are critical to obtaining maximum PC performance and overclocking. With ESA, component manufacturers can now embed a wide variety of digital and analog sensors into their devices which can communicate real-time data for use in analyzing and optimizing overall PC operating conditions. In addition, ESA's logging functionality offers PC manufacturers and system builders an inexpensive and easy way to help identify PC operating abnormalities, and enable them to quickly identify and resolve customer support issues.